Magic Judge Monthly: February 2018

Welcome to your February issue of Magic Judge Monthly. We’d please to be the ones to let you know that judge teams have translated the the rules updates for RIX, so check your local pages for those documents!

This month, we’re starting a new goal in promoting news from the entire world of judging. We’ve featured every regional blog in our documents section, and we’re looking to keep you up to date with the news from those regions! Let us know in the comments how you feel about this addition!

Otherwise, February is a short month, so enjoy a ‘slightly’ shorter MJM!

RCL application open

A position has opened for Regional Coordinator Lead. It is not required that you have been a Regional Coordinator, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in pursuing, check out this link.

This month we’re going to start a new part of MJM- featuring regional blogs from all over the world in our newsletter! Find them below for your own region’s recent news and updates!

Judge Conferences: The international L2+ conference is getting set up and I’m sure you don’t want to miss it! Alexander and Klaus join us to bring you some information about this great event to be held in the beautiful Prague. You can read more about it here!

Questions asked in the Month of February and an [O]fficial answer, just for you!

A: It does! According to CR 608.2b: “The spell or ability is countered if all its targets, for every instance of the word “target,” are now illegal. If the spell or ability is not countered, it will resolve normally. Illegal targets, if any, won’t be affected by parts of a resolving spell’s effect for which they’re illegal.”

2. If a Kalonian Tusker is enchanted by a Song of the Dryad, will it still count 2 towards Devotion to Green?

A: “The Song only affects the color of the card (by making it colorless), types that it has (and subtypes that it has), and any abilities it has (and gains the ability to tap for one green mana since it’s a Forest). It won’t affect anything else, like the mana cost of the card. Even if it’s enchanted by the Song, the Tusker’s mana cost is not affected, so it will still provide two to devotion to green.”

3. NAPa and NAPb both control a Notion Thief. AP casts Brainstorm. AP gets to choose which Notion Thief replacement effect to apply first to their card draws, such that the last chosen effect determines who ultimately draws the cards. Can AP choose to apply the replacement effects such that NAPa draws 2 cards and NAPb draws 1 card?

A: When multiple replacement effects are trying to affect the same event, the affected player doesn’t choose “the order to apply (them)”–instead, they choose one and only one replacement effect to apply, and then the game re-evaluates the situation to see if more replacements are needed. This means that in this situation, AP determines whether to apply NAPa’s or NAPb’s Thief to the first draw. (Let’s call the opponents Alan and Barb respectively for clarity’s sake.)–if they choose Alan’s Thief, the game then re-evaluates the situation. Since Alan is drawing a card and is an opponent of Barb, Barb’s Thief wants to apply, so it does so and Barb ends up drawing a card. And this happens the other way around if the active player chose to apply Barb’s Thief, so in that case Alan ends up drawing the card. In this specific situation, it amounts to much the same thing as “AP gets to choose who draws the card”, but the underlying mechanics are different.

To illustrate the difference, let’s add a third Notion Thief opponent to the mix, Carl, and start again. Now, when AP starts drawing that first card, they need to choose either Alan’s, Barb’s, or Carl’s Thief, and again, let’s say they choose Alan’s. Now the game re-evaluates: Alan is drawing a card, and both Barb’s and Carl’s Thieves would like to apply…but the player affected by those replacements is now Alan, not the active player, so it’s Alan who chooses which effect to apply. (And then, as in the original situation, the player whose Thief Alan didn’t choose winds up drawing the card.) So unlike in the original situation, the active player doesn’t get to decide who ultimately draws the card–Alan does. And adding additional opponents with additional Thieves continues this pattern, each player passing on the decisions to the next until there’s no more decisions to be made because only one effect is left.